Hello!
To use the forum, login or register above.
(If you are already logged in above, please click here)
needed feature for shipping calculation.....
ok, i set up a lot of shopping carts for websites and there is a tweak that i see that i think would be very helpful here (at least for me personally)
something that i see in most shopping carts that i believe we really need is, when calculating shipping by weight, a checkbox that would toggle rounding up to the next oz (i.e. 2.75 would round up to 3oz) and a text field that would allow for adding additional weight.
from my experience, the general rule amongst sellers is 'round up and add 1oz' to cover packaging weight. which works out when manually done on that 'other' brick selling site
the problem i am running into here is, i get an order and have bands set up for different weights. but those weights are based on the total order PART weight.
but when i go to create my shipping label and pay for shipping i must give the 'total' weight of the order (including packaging) which may or may not be within the band that was charged the customer, causing me to potentially lose money.
now i could increase my bands, but i'd rather not constantly overcharge shipping if i don't have to.
but if i had the option of having b.o. take the weight, round it up and add 1oz (or whatever i select), then my shipping bands would always be spot on for the actual cost of shipping.
something that i see in most shopping carts that i believe we really need is, when calculating shipping by weight, a checkbox that would toggle rounding up to the next oz (i.e. 2.75 would round up to 3oz) and a text field that would allow for adding additional weight.
from my experience, the general rule amongst sellers is 'round up and add 1oz' to cover packaging weight. which works out when manually done on that 'other' brick selling site
the problem i am running into here is, i get an order and have bands set up for different weights. but those weights are based on the total order PART weight.
but when i go to create my shipping label and pay for shipping i must give the 'total' weight of the order (including packaging) which may or may not be within the band that was charged the customer, causing me to potentially lose money.
now i could increase my bands, but i'd rather not constantly overcharge shipping if i don't have to.
but if i had the option of having b.o. take the weight, round it up and add 1oz (or whatever i select), then my shipping bands would always be spot on for the actual cost of shipping.
This discussion has been closed.
Powered by Vanilla
Comments
so yeah, you could increase your bands, but the point is is that ALL shopping carts that i've ever seen and installed for a website always have ways and values to slightly modify your shipping weight or charge above and beyond just the weight of the item. and if i don't want to have to make bands for every .001 ounces it would be easier to follow the general rule of round up and add 1 oz (or whatever you would want to set it to.) it's not like it would be difficult to code and the more options people could have to design shipping methods the better.
the proper way to use bands is for the different rates listed from usps (or whatever shipping method you are using). it would be easiest for most people to just get the list of bands from usps and enter those in, and then have the buffer options. instead of having to update your shipping bands AND all the crazy sub bands.
and sure, you could increase your bands, but personally i'd rather charge someone as close as possible to what the actual shipping charge is than charging 5$ for an item under 3oz. when you just increase your bands you no longer have the flexability. and as i listed above, that's why BL doesn't let someone pay until the seller puts in the shipping cost, because each package is different.
i've lost more money not having that flexability on BO. never had that issue on BL even though it would be simple enough for them to introduce banding and the options i've mentioned.
the other thing i don't understand is why neither just hook into the usps api (or any other shipping services). but that's a discussion for another day
here's a good example of what a normal shipping module setup looks like:
http://docs.woothemes.com/document/usps-shipping/
so idealy my suggestion would be since bo isn't using the api to get any of the prices, i would add these options to each band. the additional benefit to that is that as you get higher in each band you can adjust the rate as packaging would more than likely be heavier.
in the link above, if you scroll all the way down to the bottom you'll see what i'm talking about. and the video in the article give a really good overall of how it works and the other options of a shipping module.
We can already set custom weights for inventory lots, weights which are then used for shipping calculations. So, you could include the shipping materials required for some delicate parts.
I guess the only thing that might be missing would be a "custom volume" per lot, so that the automated shipping calculations could consider extra packing material volume for some lots... but, really, I'm not sure if it's worth the trouble. I don't think many sellers would use such a feature if it were implemented!
You are welcome for BrickSync.
you can't just decrease a weight band by 1.5 oz. you'd still just end up with what you have now but within a smaller range.
lets take the 1st band of usps.
that is up to 3 oz anything is $1.93 (via paypal calculations). so if your cart is anything under 3oz it is within your first band and will only charge $1.93
but lets say your cart is 2.89oz. BO will charge $1.93, but when i actually go to get shipping (rounding up and adding 1oz) now i will be in the next band (which i believe) is $2.05
now sure, i could take that band down to say 2oz but what if it's 1.89oz? again BO would charge just the weight of the parts but not the actual final shipping cost.
if you are setting up weight bands you need to be able to include an automatic adjustment.
this is how every other shopping cart out there does it if you are calculating shipping by weight.
the content management system knows what the weight of the item is and when you check out it checks with usps api and gets the value for that weight, and then you have whatever roundings or S&H or whatever you want to call it, and that is added to the cost from usps and charged to the customer.
in this case, bo is not communicating with usps, so, via bands, we are telling the shopping cart what the shipping via weight is...however we are missing the end part where our packaging cost is included.
If however, they should order 2.66oz of parts, my next band is set at 2.66-3.54oz. They will be charge $2.01 since the 0.35oz for packaging plus 2.66oz for parts exceeds the $1.93 band. At about 6 ounces, I back off by about 0.7 ounces to account for packaging. So far I've only undercharged a very small handful of orders. I end up eating the difference which is like 10c. Cost of business. If you're fretting over that then you need to relax.
What gets me is how many sellers are unaware of their packaging weights. A #000 4x8 kraft bubble mailer only weighs about 0.3oz. A #0 6x10 kraft bubble mailer weighs around 0.6oz. a shipping label is about 0.04oz. Tape and baggies add up but on smaller orders are negligible.
I've weighed other sellers orders that I've received and the packaging is NEVER more than an ounce for bubble mailers.
My research...
Brian
having had over 15 yrs developing ecommerce websites and dealing with most shipping modules/setups out there, i'm pretty sure i'm not 'over thinking' it. i was under the impression that since BO is young in it's development (and i'm sure they have a lot on their plate) that they would be open to considering offering the flexibility that most others enjoy in an ecommerce site.
being aware of costs of shipping (and how much my packaging weighs), dagsbricks confirmed what i said about the standard with most sellers (and i'm not just talking about sellers on BO) is that if you round up and add 1oz you will most often cover your shipping costs.
the current system only charges for weight and does not allow for shipping and handling adjustments other than doing it manually by adjusting your weight charges for each band.
it's great that you all want to do all this stuff manually and try to adjust for things yourself, but what i think i may not be getting across is the added flexibility that this would provide, not only with having the system automatically adjust for you but also in the added savings to your buyers.
which is why you will more than likely never find a back end for an ecommerce system without this feature.
that's awesome if you are happy to settle with a system that 'works just fine' and you have adjusted to it, but i would hope that BO sees things differently and would like to take the 'suggestions' that it's users give to grow and improve this site.
i didn't want to start some thread on 'how to make the current system work'. this isn't my first rodeo in dealing with ecommerce or doing online sales. i thought this was the 'suggestions' forum, so this was just my 2 cents.
good luck.
my suggestion still stands.
While your suggestion is valid, I feel that our comments have shown you the other side of the coin. Six of one vs half a dozen of the other. I'm not sure how your suggestion is phenomenally different, it's just a different way to do it.
I've had worse luck with Ebay's platform, especially when trying to figure the upcharge for additional items. Unless they changed it in the last couple of months, you set flat charges for everything and the weight is not fine tuned enough to handle increases well.
For instance, minifigs are about 3/oz. Buy one minifig, shipping is $1.93. Buy 6 minifigs, shipping is still $1.93 (since the cost is the same for 1-3 oz). At about 8 minifigs, THEN I should be increasing my price... to $2.01.
So would I say each minifig adds another 1c to the shipping and let averaging work it's magic?
The BrickOwl system is complete enough and robust enough for me to fine tune to my liking. Maybe I just don't know what I'm missing. Can you give us an example of sites with the functionality you are describing?
Brian
Personally I trust my own setup over any shipping (or whatever) company to do the setup, as a matter of fact, most of my setups are public on BO, so any other Belgian seller can use them as a base for their store, I'm sure any using those methods will be quite pleased ;-)
When it comes down to BO, yes there is still missing data, but Admin has setup the system that any item without dimensions is 'overcalculated', so far this has never lead to a problem for me, in ALL cases buyer paid more then they had to and they got their refund once shipped, I prefer it that way.
And over time the data will be entered and will be more accurate (how fast will depend on the help of many), so nothing to worry about I guess.
Sidenote: one other of my orders was undercalculated in regards to shipping, bummer, the size of the minifig was wrongly entered in the database, and double bummer: it was me who entered the size in the database (quickly rectified offcourse) :-D
So the cost was mine to bare :P
you both are not in the united states, so i'm assuming that your shipping methods are different than from here from what i gather talking to friends of mine in sweden, norway, holland and england. one of you is using flat rate, which doesn't really apply to what i'm talking about at all. i'm assuming you are trying to use the flate rate loophole for vat purposes, which we also don't have here. and the other one of you, your front page is a list that basically reads 'if you want to buy anything from my store you have to request a quote because the shipping setup that i say i have no problem with i never use and only give out quotes and refund when it's over or charge you more if it doesn't etc etc'.
not trying to be snarky, but i don't see how the way either one of you does shipping is really very ideal. again, it's great if it works for you but it still doesn't really address the issue that i'm talking about.
it's ok guys, i've said it before and i'll say it again. if it works for you great. if you don't agree with INDUSTRY STANDARD BEST PRACTICES, that's ok too. that's your choice. nobody's twisting your arm here. however what i will put to you is this: really sit down and ask yourself, yes, it may work best for you, but when a first time buyer or someone new to brickowl goes to your store and either reads your shipping info or buys something from you, how painless will THEIR experience be?
i'm not sure why this is called the 'suggestion' thread. in the future i probably won't bother posting here and will send suggestions directly to the admins. i feel like i'm wasting my time, and my time is much more valuable than just sitting here defending industry standard practices. i didn't create them so i don't really need to spend my time defending them.
i had a bunch more typed here but this is getting very tiring so i just deleted it. if you want just forget i said anything about anything and in the future i'll just keep my mouth shut until something better comes along.
You made a suggestion and we're simply arguing for the status quo, that's it. I'd personally be happier if you stopped assuming I'm countering just to annoy you or whatever it is you're thinking. If there's merit to your request then others will chime in and support you and/or Admin will decide to introduce it.
Regarding industry standard practices, I've been in e-commerce for over a decade now, developing my own solutions and using a plethora of CMS and third-party store systems, and I've never once come across what you're proposing. I'm sure it exists and perhaps it's pretty common in the US or wherever you're from, but that doesn't make it industry standard worldwide.
Exactly, we are not in United States and so are hundreds of other sellers, who's shipping methods all differ from one another, that's why, IMHO the Brickowl system seems to be the most practical of all: each individual seller can set up in accordance with the limitations of their postal system.
In regards to Flatrate: no loopholes, I'm not VAT registered anyway and act as a private seller, and on top my 'core' business are stickers sheets, so no problem at all to send as flatrate :P
The information about quote requests on my storepage was written when I first started selling on BO, in the mean while both my automated setup and the amount of provided data in regards to sizes and dimension on BO has progressed in such a way that I hardly provide quotes anymore (1/15 ratio), and yes, some buyers get overcharged and a refund is needed, but that's merely because of missing data in the database. You can set up or 'import' ANY kind of shipping method or volume calculation, as long as there is missing data IT WILL ALWAYS FAIL in certain cases, but you don't seem to understand that point. Any missing data will always affect ANY seller and buyer, that is a given fact. A 'detail' that for instance BL seems to be completely ignoring btw.
Offcourse you can talk with both the Admin here and on BL, I'm sure they will welcome you ideas, let us know how it turns out, so far Brickowls admin has always been open to all kind of suggestions, so no reason not to, I'm sure he can judge quite easily what is easy to implement and what seems less important based on the variaty of sellers and countries they live in, so far he has done a great job, much better then the BL developers, who seem to be concentrating on a few countries only when it comes down to 'importing' shippingmethods from postal services. Let's hope those sellers won't start massive negative threads once they realise it will fail (because of missing data offcourse).
I don't mind your proposals at all btw, but right now there is 1. more important things in regards to the developement of BO and therefor resources (=programming time) should be spend on that and 2. the amount of missing data must be reduced (with the help of many) to make autocalculation better on the vast majority of orders. And to me the latter is a key factor, not the shippingmethods setup :P
Cheers, Eric
If all sellers take notice of orders including items with missing details and help to adjust the data of these items we will soon all have a 99% working shipping systems!
George
We may talk a lot here but I think (as you said) as many of us are technical minded, we are exploring the idea and looking for a solid case while giving our reasons for appreciating this system. Ultimately it will be Admin's decision if he wants to move forward with it. But it could mean API subscriptions to USPS, UPS, FedEx, CanadaPost, RoyalPost, NLPost, DeutschPost, TNT, DHL... you get the idea.
Brian
if it's one thing i can't stand is people who are willing to settle for 'the status quo', only because, being a programmer, it's very difficult to sit by see something that has potential and could be so much better, only to feel that you are being told by everyone involed that 'it's fine the way it is. it's not like i'm unaware of the responsibilities that the ops obviously have and am just nit picking silly things to suggest.
@hoodie, i'm not sure exactly what cms systems you have worked on, but i'm pretty sure that if you gave me a list and i looked into it, i could find the same implementation that i am talking about on possibly every single one. however i don't know every shipping method in the world so my mileage may vary. ALTHOUGH, i did state before, that because brickowl doesn't use the api, that i'm not offering the SAME industry standard feature, but a slight modification to accomodate for how brickowl does things in order to become slightly more flexable, robust and automated like most other modules that use the apis.
i think BO is doing a great job at what they have accomplished and in a lot of ways is far superior to some other sites out there *cough*BL*cough*
as for the 'simple way' that you guys use, let me ask you, do you feel that it would be more or less of a pain when your postal service updates their pricing structure to have to re-figure out all your values, or simply just put in the updated rates and let your shipping module figure it out for you?
that's all i'm saying. yes, you may be used to how you do it and it may only take you a second to figure out the difference. but i'm all about using technology to it's fullest and my suggestion in the first place is that it would just be nice to simply have 2 extra boxes, one a checkbox for rounding up the band or not and a second for adding extra weight. i'm pretty sure that most would agree that this wouldn't require a major rewrite of the system and shouldn't require a degree in rocket science to figure out. if it were, then yeah, i may not have been so taken aback by what seemed like mostly closed ended comments about how everything is just fine the way it is and if everyone else is fine with it i just need to adjust to it. i'd rather discuss the merits and get other opinions and viewpoints and not argue the 'status quo'. that's just a waste of my time in my opinion.
@robernat, i do see what they are trying to do, and i think BL is trying to do the same thing. they don't want to get caught in trying to worry about keeping track of and updating many different mailing systems. BL i'm sure could put some people on the project as i'm sure since they got bought out that they have a lot bigger pool of programmers. BO yeah i can see if there are only a couple people here that it would be a daunting task. just this last year i've now seen in the industry a switch to 'subscription modules', most notably shipping modules. i'm sure they have figured out exactly what we are saying here is that it's too much work to do for free or for a one time fee. not that it's difficult to update minor api changes but just keeping track of all the rules etc is a full time job sometimes.
i completely agree with the missing data point. but i think i might have to disagree that BL has an issue when it comes to that. the thing that i feel is better with the way that BL does shipping (granted still not great) is that when someone puts in an order, you can do whatever manipulations you need to do before you send them a final invoice. i'd rather do it that way than to tell a customer they need to pay me more money for shipping. on BL you get your subtotal and then invoice them with whatever additional charges you have, preferably ones that you have stated in your terms page so they don't get sticker shock. to me that covers the possibility of there being any additional charges that the seller has to eat. unless i'm misunderstanding something in what you are saying.
but yes, BO i think is moving along and growing quite a bit better than BL. it's a shame that the new regime over at BL has closed it's ears to it's users. *cough*frigginmocstore*cough*
i'm not sure how all the updates and such go on here, but why not have some sort of repository or listing of commits that can be looked over by the community and voted on or approved? it seems that BO has a lot of like minded coders and such involved, why not give them a little bit more hands on to evolving BO? being a fan of open source i've always tried to included modular systems. so why not let others really dig in? can you imagine how fast BO would evolve?
@brickfeverparts i completely agree. unfortunately it seems to me that the delay is getting longer and longer for things to be approved. it'd be really great to allow some of the community, not only the ability to enter data (as they can already do) but maybe to vote on the validity of the updates so that the OPs have less work to do verifying the mass amounts of commits that are being submitted?
@dagsbricks i don't know about all the postal systems, but from the ones that i've been involved with, there is no fee to access the api. you go to their developer area, create an account and get your key to access the api. no limits, no fees. but as i was saying a bit above, maybe the key would be to open up the code a bit more, have some sort of code repository where others can help out with innovations to the source? maybe even get an irc channel or a mumble server so people can have these discussions and help out with some of the heavy lifting? it's a bit tough sometimes to have proper discussions in the forums....especially when some people have to write long winded posts :P
For Dutch sellers, the rough personally set margin system is and will always be the only way to do it. There's no one way to calculate what shipping prices will be, it all depends on how well some arches fit into one another or how much open spaces some panels leave, etc. Sellers have their own skill level and set of strategies to make things fit, as well as personal ideas about what is decent packaging, how much time they're willing to spend to solve the puzzle, which packaging materials they have available, if they will stack parts, etc etc. For me personally, the setting 300x240x31with no volume limit and a total dimension limit of 520mm works out great. I arrived at that through trial and error, and it will be different from seller to seller.
I'd never want to change this system in any way, and I get that we're only talking about expanding the possibilities here, but just sayin'
If I overcharge on postage I refund the difference. It doesn't happen that often and when it does the customer has always been greatful.
I'm not the only one doing this! I think it helps the site as well, don't know many online stores that do this!
Also this suggestion is still on 0 votes.
I think there's plenty of other features we would like first.
That's what I had to go off of.
I think what looks like us saying "good enough" is really "we've got it figured out, please don't make us learn something new." Now that time will come I'm sure and we'll have to eventually and you'll probably be right.
I don't know how this whole platform works but my understanding is that it's a plug and play type system with a Drupal interface (you knew that). Can't remember the brand name of this particular system we're using (I'm sure you do, a little help?)
Brian
@hoodie, i'm not really going to play your game as it's obvious you have some sort of mental deficiency and are in need of some help...i didn't see where i said 'if it's one thing i can't stand is hoodie' so i'm sorry if you are seeing things. mental illness is a very sad thing and i think you have some anger issues as well. please seek help. good luck. (btw i never said i was entirely stable either :P, i'm assuming 'we're all mad here...') when i'm talking tech, i'm a bit more proper and not using all my flowers and unicorns that some have been accustomed to. if you see it as condescending, well, then maybe you don't know me very well. and in your case, not at all. and you have yet to list any of the systems you claim to have experience with or links to reference material for others to look at. and inhouse development is a mute point here as i'm talking about industry standard best practices and modules.
that being said, @brickfeverparts i appreciate your input re:hoodie.
@teup, i can't speak for other countries as most shipping modules are specific to what they are being used for. i'm mostly speaking of any industry standard USPS shipping module, but not entirely limited to USPS as there are many others that also give you options to adjust the current rates gathered by the api.
@dagsbricks, i can totally see where everyone works hard on their shipping tiers and have a way that they are doing things. i'm not even going to get into the discussion of drupal for websites.
let me see if i can clear the fee a little bit. ok i have a client that wants a store. i set up a nice cms system such as wordpress. then i set up the store module, lets say, woocommerce. now, they have some basic shipping stuff, but if you want an actual USPS shipping module that you can integrate into woocommerce, then you would go through their list of shipping modules, find the one you want (usps in this case) and pay for it. now, before, these were either free or pay modules, but i think the module developers decided that it was a bit of work to keep track of when the USPS changes their rates and api and have to update the module, so now most shipping modules charge a yearly subscription fee for updates now. which is fine by me as i can provide a proper shipping module for my clients and let the developer support it.
in the case here, if they are using drupal then i'm assuming they are developing their own cms system and there are no available 'modules' for them to purchase. i'm sure there are probably some out there but i kicked drupal to the curb many years ago.
the reason i came back here today was that bricklink just announced their new shipping module. and let me say it's pretty gravy. they appear to be using not ONLY the usps api but the api for other country shipping as well ( Deutsche Post, Royal Mail and NL Posts according to the info).
it also looks like they allow you to use your own shipping rates, which for me would be fine since the api they are hooking into only appears to get retail rates and not commercial, which is what i use.
AND.....what do my eyes see??? ADJUSTMENT OPTIONS!!!!! looks like BL finally did something right for a change..... yes it's slightly different than what i originally suggested here, but that was based on how BO does things. the point is it's there and should be in any mature shipping module.
thanks folks. it's been fun. i'll be here all week. cookies and refreshments in the lobby....